The Gambia in 2012

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Under Pres. Yahya Jammeh a climate of fear, repression, and corruption reigned in The Gambia in 2012. The November 2011 presidential election, conducted relatively peacefully, returned Jammeh to office for a fourth term, but the regional organization Economic Community of West African States refused to send observers because it did not think the poll would be free and fair, and the opposition leader Ousainou Darboe rejected the result and called the election bogus. Jammeh had used public resources to ensure his reelection victory in late 2011, and there was significant evidence of corruption and misappropriation of state funds by his government. In January 2012 his former information minister, Amadou Scattred Janneh, was found guilty of having committed treason and was sentenced to life in jail, in part for distributing T-shirts with the slogan “End to dictatorship now.” Having earlier threatened to behead all homosexuals, Jammeh announced in August 2012 that all those who had been sentenced to death, including a number of his political opponents, would be executed by the middle of September. Amid much international criticism, nine prisoners were killed before Jammeh announced in mid-September that the remaining executions would be suspended. The next month some feared that the executions might resume after the Supreme Court dismissed the appeals of seven individuals (including the country’s former army chief) who had been convicted of treason. During the year, Jammeh continued to close down radio stations and newspapers he did not like, and there were many reports of torture and the disappearance of political opponents. The whereabouts of a leading journalist arrested years earlier by intelligence agents remained unknown. Brooking no dissent, Jammeh either jailed military personnel whom he saw as a threat or sent them to embassies abroad.

Though increasingly a figure of ridicule in the international community, Jammeh nevertheless was able to borrow heavily abroad. In The Gambia, which was officially classified as a Heavily Indebted Poor Country, about half the population continued to live in dire poverty, and many died of curable diseases.

One bright spot in Gambian news was the June appointment of former Gambian justice minister Fatou Bensouda as the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. She was the first African and the first woman to hold that position. Another came in November when Jammeh appointed The Gambia’s UN representative, Susan Wafa-Ogoo, as the country’s first woman minister of foreign affairs.

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